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Federal Buildings Moving to Sustainability
In a memorandum of understanding promoting green principles for buildings owned or operated by the federal government, officials this winter avoided backing any one system, leaving the door open for the many green programs now available for both the commercial and residential sectors.
The memorandum was “a positive signal,” said Vicki Worden, who oversees commercial programs for the Green Building Initiative and has worked to introduce architects, builders and engineers to Green Globes, a system that has enjoyed success in Canada and is now gaining popularity in the United States.
The Green Building Initiative has also worked in partnership with NAHB to help state and local home builders associations start voluntary green building programs for their members. With GBI assistance, more than 30 local associations are expected to have incorporated NAHB’s Model Green Home Building Guidelines into their own programs by the end of this year.
In January, the White House Summit on Federal Sustainable Buildings committed 17 federal agencies and the Executive Office of the President to follow green guidelines in design, energy performance, water conservation, indoor air quality and sustainable materials to ensure that new federal buildings are among the most energy-efficient in the country.
The agreement adopted during the symposium also specified that building components should exceed the energy code, and that the effectiveness of a building’s actual energy performance should be verified during its first year of operation by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star performance rating system for buildings.
The memorandum “goes a step beyond LEED” rating systems introduced by the U.S. Green Building Council, Worden said. “More needs to be done. This [memorandum] signals that the federal government is looking for ways to meet criteria, and the fact that they did not cite a specific rating system for building demonstrates the important effect that their decisions have on a huge market. Leaving it open, not just citing LEED, means there is space for other ratings systems to come in,” she said.
The federal government owns approximately 445,000 buildings with a total floor space of more than 3 billion square feet, in addition to leasing 57,000 buildings comprising 374 million square feet of floor space.
Over 10 years, reducing energy consumption in federal buildings by 10% would cut their greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 625,000 cars and save tax payers $420 million dollars, according to the Association for Facilities Engineering.
For more information on NAHB’s green building resources, e-mail Calli Schmidt, or call her at 800-268-5242 x8132.
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